Career and leadership building similar to startup development

I got to thinking about my own career and noticed some strategy similarities to startups. I just finished reading the book, The Startup of You: Adapt, Take Risks, Grow Your Network, and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, and it seems I’m not alone in seeing similarities in career strategies, leadership development strategies and startup strategies. I noticed that managing one’s own career and establishing, promoting, leading and building a startup company have similarities.

As we have entered what Hoffman calls the “Age of the Inconceivable,” the Open Organization Principle of Adaptability is considered most important with Collaboration, Community, Inclusivity and Transparency after that. It is a time in which unimaginable things happen again and again and again. Rapid change has become the norm. Also, we live in an environment where there is a great deal of professional disruption, with careers and skills becoming obsolete very quickly. Therefore, to be successful in this environment of unexpected changes, we must be dedicated to our goals but be adaptable to radical market alterations. We must continually reassess our aspirations, tap into resources within our networks, and creatively generate novel new opportunities for ourselves. Also, as leaders, we must encourage others to do the same.

According to Hoffman, you should think of a company startup when it comes to managing and shaping your career, as both have to expand their networks, gaining competitive advantage and finding interesting opportunities. That sounds like better collaboration and community development, not to mention adaptability, to me. This all requires training and investing in yourself and mentor others to continually develop skills as well. Hoffman asked when creating LinkedIn “How does someone experiment broadly and build specialized expertise?” as he thought entrepreneurship is a lifelong idea, not a single business concept. It is a global idea, not a specific cultural one.

Portfolio careers

It may be necessary to fragment our careers into several different jobs in which income comes from multiple sources. This is the era of the gig economy, namely people working flexible, temporary jobs that one can opt in and out of at will. This will require people to diversify the way they network, invent, customize and experiment with different professional activities, all leading to less risk and greater opportunities.

Consider independent contractors and consultants that have supplemental income projects along with a primary career. These people go out of their way to keep their clients and followers happy with their work. They do their own sales and marketing, which needs research and requires them to organize their own development teams. Therefore, leadership becomes extremely important and multidirectional.

Competitive advantage and rapid change

When should you consider productive time? When should you earn income? When should you consider what you like doing? While exploring all these issues, you have to envision what will be needed in the future and develop for it. According to Hoffman, the world is changing very fast, and you must recognize that and anticipate each small iterative step of that change.

To be competitive, according to Hoffman, you must separate yourself from others in these two ways: having a rare skill or asset and having a valuable skill or asset. Consider if you are faster, better, or less costly than others within any work related activity. What assets do you have which are rare and valuable in your specific niche field of expertise? Consider these two asset types.

Hard assets are physical, including money, and having them is important. When you need time to study or develop a skill and don’t need to work to survive, these physical assets are helpful. They are reserves in case of crises. They do have limits though. You can get by but not necessarily have a successful, interesting and exciting career. I saw a study years ago that concluded that if you have US$100,000 in the bank and all debts for homes and property paid for and have a strong feeling of financial security, each additional dollar you received and saved after that has reduced value to you. From that point on, having more hard assets will make you less happy, as you may start losing friends that care about you.

Soft assets are the brain power, skills (including leadership skills), contacts, reputation, energy and desires you have. Consider the knowledge and information you have and your professional and trusted connections. You should attempt to expand on these soft assets throughout your life. Initially, these assets are hard to visualize and present to others, but they can be clearly demonstrated over time. Soft assets are more important than any specific passion. You are looking for valuable, needed, marketable soft assets that you enjoy doing and want to develop further. This will lead you to purpose and mastery, which in turn will evolve into excitement. This is what happened to me when I started giving sales seminars. I grew to love it, and through that love, those seminars grew in demand. Unlike hard assets, soft assets are only limited by your imagination. How can you fully apply them? How strong is your desire to develop these assets and learn? Think about what you find easy to do with your skills, experiences and connections that others find challenging. That is where your greatest soft assets are.

Chase’s Plan ABZ trial-and-error plans

All plans must be followed to the point where they are no longer productive or worthwhile. When original plans fail, alternative plans should be ready and quickly available. According to Hoffman, you should explore three career-exploring plans:

Plan A: What you want to accomplish right now. This plan’s purpose is to help develop your current competitive career advantage.

Plan B: What you do if Plan A is no longer in demand or worthwhile. You will have to anticipate changing factors and know exactly what adjustments or modifications to apply. It might be working on a slightly different skill or approaching completely different organizations. This requires playing with and experimenting with various second choice options. You could find new professional support, increase tasks or add extra resources. Plan B is the best of all modification options. To find your Plan B, consider what will change in the coming ten years and what will stay the same. Possibly what will stay the same is where your Plan B will be spotted. You either change your goals or change the process you use to achieve the same goals. Once you pivot to Plan B, it becomes your new, improved Plan A and you have to develop a new Plan B.

Plan Z: What you do if all plans become unviable. Due to unforeseen, disruptive business shocks, this is what to do if all plans fail. You must have a last resort plan to remind you that total plan failure might not be as bad as you think, which will reduce the chance of developing paralyzing fear of making important decisions. It is the lifeboat that will provide you vital time to regroup. It is implemented only so that you can survive in the worst possible business environment.

Starting Plan A

To get started on your Plan A, you could just pick up a side job around a career you might be interested in to get to know people and their tasks. Also, you could do things for free within that field to build trust, demonstrate dedication or amplify your skills. Remember, your Plan A could be improved and iterated regularly, as you progress toward it. It is exploring what you would like to do right now.

Hoffman thinks you should ask three questions to make sure you are not randomly wasting a lot of effort.

1. Has your soft and hard assets changed to the point where it is time to change? I believe I am now skilled at __ and have the required resources to support me while getting comfortable with that new, desired position.
2. Has your desires and aspirations changed to the point where redirection is appropriate? I now believe I find meaning in __.
3. Has the working environment and the market needs of what you want to offer changed to the point where you must redirect your efforts? I now believe the market for what I want to provide carries very little current value. I must work toward doing something else.

Finding Plan B

The answers to the above will make explicit whether your current assumptions and hypotheses are right or wrong. Plan B should be explored when Plan A is no longer worthwhile. Minor concerns should not be enough to abandon Plan A. Use this process:

1. Test your hypotheses against reality on a trial-and-error basis. Study new and interesting concepts to generate options in the future. Try something new and work with recently met people to generate new experiences in niche adjacent occupations. This is not wasteful random exploration, but targeted to confirm or modify assumptions and aspirations. This exploration should be conducted concurrently with your income earning activities. 
2. Then, think about those options against your strengths and weaknesses. Where could your strengths be used? 
3. After evaluation, form a plan around these thoughts:
   1. I believe I am now skilled at __ which I can utilize for this plan.
   2. I now believe I can find meaning by pursuing this plan.
   3. I now believe society needs will be served by this plan.

Plan Z’s importance

Plan Z defines what to do if all fails. What if your Plan A is no longer workable, Plan B is unfeasible and you have no idea what to do next? Whether it is a new startup, a job change consideration, an investment in a new project, a family member illness or some other massive disruption, how do you adjust? When all plans collapse, will you move home with your parents (relatives, friends), sell your house, or get a part-time, gig economy job? You could set up a savings account to support you if all plans collapse, to give you time to rethink and rebuild. Discussing this with your parents and loved ones in advance will help to generate Plan Z ideas. You might have to change your diet, sell less used assets or take your children out of expensive schools for a period of time. After thinking about it, you will notice that you can at least survive, which reduces a lot of stress.

Plan Z is only the lifeboat to give you time to adapt when disaster hits. It is not a long-term plan. Time is required to pivot, redesign and develop both a completely new Plan A and Plan B. Plan Z offers that time required.

Plan Z’s greatest value

If you are prepared for the worst scenario, the fear of failure weakens for both Plan A and B. Fear tends to focus people on the ideal goals and objectives only. If the fear is reduced, it allows people to explore other opportunities as the project progresses. One’s attention should be on Plan A most of the time, but also having a Plan Z is vital. You only move your attention to Plan B when you’re forced to as Plan A becomes impossible. You move to Plan Z when you’re forced to, as both Plan A and Plan B become impossible.

But, having a Plan Z, you can aggressively pursue the upsides of Plans A and B and mitigate against possible downside risks of them. 

This is true for leaders as well, as they have to know when to continue promoting their team’s Plan A, or pivot to Plan B and explain why to their team that all has failed. The team has to try to support each other and rethink how they can get back on track.

Plan Z is the most certain, reliable, and stable plan if all your career plans come unglued, or you have unforeseen, major life-changing events. This plan allows you to better withstand the uncertainty and risks of your Plans A and B. If you work on all three A, B and Z strategies, you will be under less stress and more ideas will come out. Under stress, creativity weakens.

To give you an example of this, let me get personal: I worked in a Japanese automotive company as an overseas sales trainer for 21 years. The company had financial problems around the years 2000 to 2001. I know that I would have to do something, as new products were drastically delayed and my training budgets greatly reduced. So, while working, I started looking for training positions within the automotive industry worldwide (staying with Plan A, training in the automotive industry). That produced no positions, as all companies were suffering, so I started to look at overseas market development positions within the automotive industry (slight modifications to a Plan B). That too produced just a few interviews. With the company suffering, I was offered an early retirement which gave me a few year’s salary (I was in Plan Z, and had to rethink my entire career). After four months of looking, I found a position in the construction, cutting tool industry. Although I knew overseas selling processes, the industry was totally different, I lost my customer base in the automotive industry and had to learn new products and a new market. In that job, it took me two years before I built a new customer base and became fully productive.

Building a career plan support network

Once you get your A, B and Z Plans prepared, where do you go to get help to implement them? I will talk about that in the second part of this discussion on career, leadership and startup development.